Audience

What if we thought of sculpture as having a life? Most African art now in American collections has more history in Europe and America than in Africa. Lamp describes investigating the history of 585 objects in the 2004 gift to Yale from the late Charles Benenson, by tracking down anyone who had interacted with the objects, including family members, friends, associates, and other collectors, dealers, scholars, and artists. The result is Accumulating Histories: African Art from the Charles B. Benenson Collection at the Yale University Art Gallery (2012), a catalogue of the collection that also tells a story of the African art market in its heyday in New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s.